Do Multiple Hard Drives Slow a System?

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vilhiem

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 24, 2005
Messages
125
I have a fairly nice AMD64 system with 3 hard drives (a 36 Raptor, a 72 Raptor, and a 120 vanilla). Now I only have 2gb hard memory. Does having three hard drives slow the efficiency of a Windows Vista Ultimate system?


Here are the rest of my specs:
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Memory (RAM) 2.00 GB
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Gaming graphics 1407 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 8GB Free (69GB Total)
Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate

System
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer System manufacturer
Model System Product Name
Total amount of system memory 2.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 2

Storage
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Total size of hard disk(s) 216 GB
Disk partition (C:) 8 GB Free (69 GB Total)
Media drive (D:) CD/DVD
Media drive (E:) CD/DVDCD
Disk partition (F:) 9 GB Free (112 GB Total)
Disk partition (G:) 4 GB Free (34 GB Total)

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Total available graphics memory 1407 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 640 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 767 MB
Display adapter driver version 7.15.11.6369
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1200
DirectX version DirectX 9.0 or better
 
He means, it depends how they are configured: raid or seperation. Since your asking the question I'd assuming your running seperation. If this is the case, in a worst case scenario your computer will run just as fast as a computer with one hard drive.

But you may be suffering from bitrot. I forget who it is that coined the term but it basically states that the state of any data will decay over time. Registries get changed and changed back, drivers get written over, removed, then re-written over, data is moved, shifted around, poorly written software munkies around with windows registry, screwing everything up etc etc. To maintain good performance I suggest you do a clean windows re-install maybe once every two years. Make sure you defrag regularly of course.

To that end however, hard drives shouldn't be considered "vanilla", as they vary quite a bit, even between ones of the same RPM. The new uberplatter (or super platter or huge platter or something like that) hard drives produced by hitachi and I believe samsung now have a total I/O almost up to as much as a raptor, in some scenarios.

Raid stands for "redundant array of independant (aka inexpensive) drives". Originally it was used as a form of data security, but can now be used to actually increase read/write to hard drive performance. The most popular form of raid around these forums would be raid 0, which spreads files of the same program across multiple hard drives so as to increase read speeds, raid 1, which takes two drives and mirrors them, and raid 5, which is a little to hard to explain but is a better thought out way to protect your data (like raid 1) while reducing the amount of wasted space.

also, wheres your page file?
 
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